Came the dawn : memories of a film pioneer (1951)

The Dawn comes to Flicker Alley Still a familiar figure in Wardour Street, Mr. Cecil Hepworth is a pioneer of British Cinema. In his autobiography he has a fascinating story to tell. They were simpler, sunnier days. Hepworth began in the 'showmanship' period in the late 'nineties, carrying his forty-second films to lecture-halls all over the country, where frenzied audiences demanded their repetition many times at a sitting. From the 'fairground' period he helped nurse the cinema to the time of the great Hepworth Company at its Walton-onThames studios. To those studios came famous stage actors, men of mark in many fields, anxious to try the new medium. In those studios many 'stars' of yesterday made world-wide reputations: Alma Taylor, Chrissie White, Gerald Ames, Ronald Colman, Violet Hopson, Stewart Rome, names remembered with deep affection four decades later. From Walton-on-Thames films were dispatched in quantity to the world, even to the United States before the Hollywood era. Conditions, if not primitive, were rudimentary in the earlier days; the grandiose notions of the industry today were undreamt of; and, most marvellous of all, leading actors and actresses played for as little as half a guinea a day (including fares), and were not averse to doing sorting, filing and running errands in their spare time. [ please turn to back flap MANY ILLUSTRATIONS 16s NET